GRGR(4) Re: Pynchon's Faith

[MalignD at aol.com]

pmackin:

<<Would you be willing to accept that you interchanged  the terms not only 
loosely but to fudge meaning more than an insignificant amount?>>

Millison:

<<No I did not "fudge" meaning, if by that you mean that on purpose I was
playing fast and loose with the terms ...>>

 Let's go through this again.

DaveMarc wrote, earlier:  

<<If I understand Doug correctly, he's stating that Pynchon believes that the 
Holy Ghost once interacted with humans.>>

That's what rjackson took him to mean and also what I took him to mean--that 
Millison offered up the cited quote as a statement of what Pynchon 
"Believes"; i.e., believes about God.  And the quote obviously reveals 
nothing of the sort.  As rj first pointed out, it rather offers an historical 
statement--neither original, new, or striking--about the centering place 
faith once held in society and does no longer; the nub of both our responses. 

Further, as rj noted:  

<<I didn't take into consideration the possibility that Doug's phrase "Mr P's 
own thoughts and beliefs" was a tautology, as it now appears. >>  

Nor did I nor, apparently, davemarc.

Millison would now have it that what he meant all along by "belief" was what 
P believes or thinks or opines.  ["I used the terms loosely."]  He dismisses 
as a  "hair-splitting distinction" rj's note that what one thinks and 
believes are hardly the same thing.  All he meant, Millison now says, was 
that Pynchon "believes" that faith once held a centering place in society:  

<<It's the point I've been making all along, despite the efforts to make it 
appear that I've been saying that TRP says something other than this in the 
Sloth essay.>> 

Here, finally, the point.  Were that true, Millison should have agreed with 
rj immediately, since that's the simple point rj made in response.  It should 
have been taken as no more than a useful clarification.  Instead ...  

Instead, two days of disingenuous tap-dancing (and a witless claim of 
persecution:  "silly me, despite years of experience of knee-jerk objections 
to virtually everything I post on Pynchon-L -- still it does often put the 
objectors through some foolish contortions just to deny what I say!").     

Right.
 
Now another strawman:

<<Does TRP personally believe that the Holy Ghost has been visibly at work in 
the world? I don't know, and I'll bet my next paycheck that rj can't provide 
a definitive answer to that question either.>>

Big risk, that bet.  rj never made any claim one way or another about what 
Pynchon believes or doesn't and there's no reason he should. 

rj adds:

<<Anyway, I'm glad Doug is calmer now. It *is* good having him round, sorta 
like a big brother, dontcha know.>>

Time for rj to define terms.  What could you possibly mean by "good"?